What Life is Really Like Behind the Hall Door

ALS Awareness Month

Have you ever had that feeling of something coming at you more than once? You know…someone tells you a story or you hear something on the radio and a few days later the topic comes up again at a lunch with friends or in an email. Well, the phenomenon is known as synchronicity and it’s officially defined as “an apparently meaningful coincidence of two or more similar or identical events that are casually unrelated”. The term was coined by Carl Jung to explain meaningful coincidences”. Today I had one.

It’s probably wrong to say I had one because by the very definition of synchronicity there must be two or more occurrences. So let me be precise…in the last five days, ALS, a disease that slowly robs a person of his or her ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe, has come to my attention more than once. The first time was last Sunday, while at church, and the second was this morning through a friend on Facebook.

Do you know about ALS, which is often called Lou Gehrig’s disease? It is a progressive, fatal neuromuscular disease and the life expectancy of a person with ALS is, on average, 2 to 5 years from the time of diagnosis. Two to five years…that’s not nearly long enough to love your family, hug your children, kiss your spouse, laugh with friends, organise your life, say goodbye.

The cause of ALS is still unknown but the disease is not. May is ALS Awareness Month. It’s also the month that Will and Catherine Gowan of Nashville, Tennessee are asking one million people to go to YouTube and watch the video their dad created to raise awareness for ALS…the disease their mother, Amy Adams Gowan, was diagnosed with in October 2009.

The video above is 3 minutes long. It’s beautiful and sweet and uplifting. Please, watch it… it will mean so much to Catherine, Will, and their parents Robert and Amy. When you’re done, send it to someone else. Let’s make this a moment of synchronicity for more than just me…the goal is 1,000,000 people!

Thoughts and prayers are with the Gowan family and Jim Gonsalvez, a lovely man also fighting this disease. Thank you for helping, Dear Readers.